Profile:

Gardeners' Notes:

Wildly exotic. Every visitor notices it and comments. Not your familiar woody hibiscus. Rather, it's herbaceous and fairly tender. Very fast growing in filtered shade. Tends to be stalky unless clipped. Mine grew to 10' in 12 months and is only now sending out side shoots. Leaves are dinner plate sized with coarse thorns on the upside. Wildly colorful with bright red stems and veins, coupled with light green and deep yellow blooms. Infrequent bloomer. Seed pods are lemon sized and covered with small sharp hairs and need to be handled carefully. Think sharp Velcro. I've had no difficulty propagating this from seed, although germination in a shady moist area took over 30 days. A great addition to a tropical shade garden, or as a potted plant, although one needs to keep it trimmed if potting. No signs of invasiveness, or of spreading via seed droppings. Highly recommended as an exotic.

If Hemmingway said that once you're resigned to it, trees in winter are sculpture, then he really should have wintered in zone 10b. I added this plant to my garden reading nook and find myself inspired and mesmerized by its angling trunk, jurasic leaves and periodic bursts of crimson red and canary yellow flowers. It benefits from the shade of a hedge and a damp location. I think this could be a spectacular pond margin plant.